Study: Curbing climate change crucial to oceans’ survival

More than half the world’s oceans could suffer multiple symptoms of climate change over the next 15 years, including rising temperatures, acidification, lower oxygen levels and decreasing food supplies, new research suggests. By midcentury, without significant efforts to reduce warming, more than 80 percent could be ailing – and the fragile Arctic, already among the most rapidly warming parts of the planet, may be one of the regions most severely hit.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, uses computer models to examine how oceans would fare over the next century under a business-as-usual trajectory and a more moderate scenario in which the mitigation efforts promised under the Paris Agreement come into effect. In both scenarios, large swaths of the ocean will be altered by climate change.

Gentoo penguins stand on a rock near station Bernardo O'Higgins, Antarctica. A new study postulates that mitigating climate change can slow ocean acidification, giving species more time to adapt or migrate. Associated Press/Natacha Pisarenko

Nearly all of the open sea is acidifying because of greenhouse gas emissions. But the researchers found that cutting greenhouse gas emissions could significantly delay future changes, giving marine organisms more time to migrate or adapt.

“Things that live in the ocean are used to regular variability in their environments,” said lead study author Stephanie Henson, a scientist at the National Oceanography Center at the University of Southampton in Britain. “It gets warm in the summer and it gets cold in the winter, and species survive that kind of range in temperature or other conditions perfectly well.”

But she noted a warming climate could eventually cause changes in the ocean that have never happened before: hotter temperatures, lower pH or less oxygen than have ever naturally occurred. When this happens, some organisms may no longer be able to tolerate the changed conditions and will be forced to migrate, evolve as a species or face extinction.

There’s a large degree of uncertainty in the scientific community about how organisms will react. But there’s evidence to suggest major challenges ahead. Mass coral bleaching events in the past few years have been largely attributed to unusually warm water temperatures. Large-scale coral death on the Great Barrier Reef last year is thought to be strongly linked to climate change.

“So we wanted to know when will climate change actually push the system outside the range of natural variability that organisms are used to,” Henson said.

The researchers focused on four specific climate-influenced “drivers,” of marine ecosystems: temperature, pH, oxygen levels and “primary production,” or how much food is available to a community.

Some parts of the ocean are already experiencing certain climate-driven changes beyond the limits of their natural conditions. The researchers note in the paper that 99 percent of the open ocean is experiencing a climate-driven change in pH, or ocean acidification. The subtropics and the Arctic are also experiencing sea surface temperatures beyond their natural ranges. And these changes will only continue to spread.

Under a business-as-usual climate scenario, the researchers found an alarming portion of the ocean will be affected by changes in multiple drivers at once. By 2030, they projected, 55 percent of the world’s oceans will experience changes in more than one of these factors – temperature and pH, most commonly – beyond the range of natural variability. By 2050, this number rises to 86 percent.

The projections suggest climate mitigation can stall these effects – at least for a little while. Under the moderate climate scenario, the researchers found, 34 percent of the ocean will be affected by changes in multiple drivers, and 69 percent by 2050. In general, they concluded that climate mitigation can delay the onset of climate-influenced changes by about 20 years.

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